Penny Slinger is an avant-garde artist from Great Britain and a celebrated figure in the early feminist art movement. She is known for her radical, erotic, and mystical photo collages.While studying at the Chelsea College of Arts, Penny became heavily influenced by Max Ernest and mid-1920s surrealism. At the start of her career, she developed a series of early films that used her body as a canvas, surveying unsettling and macabre topics such as the relationship between architecture and decay, altered states of consciousness, and the occult. Experimenting with mediums such as collage and photography, Penny would elicit upheaval in her exhibitions throughout the UK.
Spectacle is honored to host her for a Q&A on September 17 where we will show Lilford Hall and An Exorcism, The Works together.
The entire program, Alchemy and Ecstasy, will feature three films from Penny Slinger to feature an overview of her early video art from the 1960s to the 1970s– a formative period in her overall career, which has spanned over five decades.
Dir. Penny Slinger, 1960s
UK, 40 minutes
Silent
THURSDAY, SEPTEMBER 8 – 7:30 PM
MONDAY, SEPTEMBER 19 – 10 PM
SUNDAY, SEPTEMBER 25 – 7:30 PM
This program features six films from the 1960s and early 1970s. In these videos, Penny is still a student at the Chelsea College of Arts, experimenting with surrealism. Her early work depicts a range of techniques, such as incorporating multiple exposures and time-lapse. With her lens, she observes a range of morbid and nostalgic topics such as mummification, Alice in Wonderland, and feelings of entrapment.
Dir. Penny Slinger, 1969
UK, 79 minutes
Silent
AN EXORCISM, THE WORKS
Dir. Penny Slinger, 2020
UK, 33 minutes
In English
TUESDAY, SEPTEMBER 13 – 10 PM
SATURDAY, SEPTEMBER 17 – 5 PM, with filmmaker Q&A (this event is $10)
TUESDAY, SEPTEMBER 20 – 10 PM
Lilford Hall: A short experimental art video shot inside a decaying mansion, where Penny intimately chronicles the ‘unraveling’ of the Self from dualistic limitations and the projections of others.
An Exorcism, The Works: An animated film created in 2019 by Slinger and her partner Dhiren Dasu. During the 1970s, as she worked on the content for the hauntingly surreal series of collages in Slinger’s seminal publication An Exorcism (1977), she also wrote a synonymous film script and crafted an expanded version of the publication, which includes additional collage works and text. These materials were never published. As the collages from the series have gained exposure over the years, Slinger sought to further contextualize these visuals within the larger original narrative arc. It was to that end that she decided to make An Exorcism – The Works.